Brain training reverses age-related cognitive decline

July 21, 2010

Intense auditory brain training targeted at the regions of a rat’s brain that process sound reversed many aspects of normal, age-related cognitive decline and improved the health of the brain cells, according to a new study from researchers at University of California, San Francisco.

The results indicate that people who experience age-related cognitive decline, including slower mental processing and decreased response to new stimuli, might also benefit from specially designed mental exercises.

The researchers targeted the rats’ primary auditory cortices, the sound-processing areas of their brains. In their training, rats heard a rapid sequence of six notes, five of the same pitch and one different, oddball pitch. The oddball note came at random on any one of the sequence’s final four notes.

When a rat recognized the oddball note, it received a food reward. The researchers progressively upped the difficulty by stepping the oddball’s pitch from a half-octave above the base note to ultimately only one-fiftieth an octave difference. Both young and aging rats steadily improved.

They found that myelin density and neuron health improved in the primary auditory brain regions to nearly the level seen in young rats.

“The neurons looked young again. They were full and robust. It’s like a hose without water going through it appears collapsed. Run the water and it expands to its original size. Recovery happens,” Rick C.S. Lin, a professor of anatomy at the University of Mississippi Medical Center said. “It indicates the brain is a lot more plastic. The training exercises reopen the hose and the rats recovered almost to the point of young rats.”

More info: University of California, San Francisco news